Physics 1110,
General Physics 1
When objects collide, it seems at first glance like the physics must be
hopelessly complicated. Can we understand, describe, and
predict events like the one you see in the pictures? The answer is a
(slightly qualified) YES! The principle of conservation of momentum
allows us to understand a great deal of what's happening in such
catastrophic events. Although some of the fine details are indeed
complicated, the basic picture (what happens to the bullet, what
happens to the center of mass of the systems) are straightforward to
describe! These same principles are used by the police in ballistics
studies (e.g. to figure out the speed of a bullet) or in their traffic
accident reports (e.g. to figure out if the driver was speeding
before the crash).
The bullet image is another from
Harold "Doc" Edgerton's high speed imaging work. (If you didn't
have a chance to look at other such images when I linked to them a few
weeks ago, here are some more stills and some collision movies that require
a high bandwidth internet connection). The crash picture comes from the insurance institute for
highway safety site. (They also have cool movies of dummy crash tests)
Week 10 Highlights:
Applying conservation of momentum: collisions
This week, we're in Ch 10 of HRW, section 5 of Thinkwell. (Momentum, and
collisions)
Special notes: 
- I put up the new long answer hw problem and then changed it an hour
later on Saturday, so please make sure (if you printed it out Saturday early
afternoon) that you have the latest version! (Sorry about that)
- There is a new participation question online (#7)!
- Pretest will close Wed 9 AM, as usual.
- The tutorial homework DUE this week is listed in the "assignments"
link as usual. When you get to tutorial this Thursday, the tutorial you do
will not be from the books. You will get a
copy in section, but if you want to see it in advance, here is the tutorial and here is the corresponding tutorial homework that will be due the following
week.
- Exam solutions are posted (see exams and grades links). Results have
been emailed
Old home page from weeks
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
or 9
We welcome your comments on the class and this website. Send them to Prof. Pollock
